The application of redemption

The Fourth Particular for opening of the Point.

The behaviour of the heart under this stroke; §4and that appears in the Particulars following:

The behavior of the heart under this stroak; §4and that appears in the Particulars following:

When this Sorrow is rightly set on, and the soul rightly §1affected therewith, the sinner hath the loath somness of corruption ever in his sight, keeps it ever within his ken: he could not be brought before to take to heart, the heinousness of […] evil; Ministers pressed him with it in public, others minded him of it in private, forewarned him of the direful venom and […] that lay in those distempers of his, that one day he was like to feel to the hazard of his everlasting happiness, it would be ⟨p. 397⟩bitterness in the latter end. but he turned the deaf ear to all, would not so much as take it into consideration, not once look back into the danger of his rebellions, nor listen to any thing that may force the same upon his soul; but now the case is altered; he that could not be brought to see sin before, now he will see nothing but sin, cannot be brought to look off from it, he feels now the plague of those provocations of his, and finds by woeful proof and experience the truth of all that formerly hath been told him, and hath time enough now to recount the savoury counsels, those seasonable reproofs, directions & entreaties which would have kept him from the commission of those evils, the heinousness whereof he is not able to conceive; the bitterness and poison whereof he is not able to bear, now he is constrained to feel the sting thereof. He hath now leisure to survey the folly and perverseness of his spirit in former times and to sit down in silence and shame; now he can seal to that as an eternal truth of God which before he east behind his back as slight and vain; Oh I now see the Ministers were faithful watch-men which foresaw the danger, and foretold me how dreadful the evils would be which did attend my distempers, If I would not leave my sin, mercy and blessing would leave me, and my heart feels it so. The Christians were loving and compassionate which laboured by earnest and affectionate entreaties to with draw me from the ways of wickedness, which with drew me from God, & by woeful experience I find it so.